Cats have always been our overlords, perhaps ever since the beginning of time. Because they are our lords, they deserve our time, our love, our worship, and our service. They also deserve glorious homes, and those were just what these people gave to them.

See the majestic cat castles made out of cardboard over at Sad and Useless.

(Image Credit: Sad And Useless)

It was an early June evening, and two scientists, physicist Raphael Sarfati and computer scientist Orit Peleg, can be found deep in the forest trail in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, bringing with them gear that is vital to photographing their subject, like butterfly nets, and GoPro cameras. Their subject: fireflies who turn on and off their lights in sync with each other.

Unlike many firefly species that flash in individualized patterns for months every summer, these special fireflies display in a specific, collective pattern that the scientists wanted to track.

With their tent and cameras set up and dusk descending, the sporadic blinking of individual fireflies harmonized into synchronous flashing. “They are everywhere around you. You can’t even count how many there are, all flashing at the same time for a few seconds and then they all stop at the same time as well. It’s dark and then it picks it up again,” Sarfati says. “It’s really astonishing.”

But why fireflies? Their study, it turns out, would be helpful in improving robot communication and synchronization in the near future.

Learn more details about this study over at Smithsonian Magazine.

(Image Credit: Radim Schreiber/ Wikimedia Commons)

This is the A la Ronde, a house built by cousins Jane and Mary Parminter in 1796. With its numerous windows scattered across its walls, this house never fails to see the light of day, literally!

On the outside, the house looks rather strange. But on the inside, it is magnificent.

The house… [consists] of 20 rooms distributed in three floors. The ground floor originally housed the staff quarters, the wine cellar, a strong room and the kitchen, while the first floor was for the ladies. At the center of the house is an octagonal hallway with eight doors leading into as many rooms arranged radially. The rooms are connected with each other so it’s possible to make a complete circuit of these rooms without entering the octagon itself. This was important, because Jane and Mary liked to move about from one room to another following the warmth of the sun. They would start with breakfast [in] the east-facing room and then move around to finish with tea in an oval room on the west in the evening.

But the house isn’t the only thing amazing in this story. How this house was passed on to its next owners was amazing, too.

Jane Parminter died in 1811 and was buried in the tiny chapel on land adjoining A la Ronde. Mary continued to live at A la Ronde until her death in 1849. Her will specifically stated that the property must be inherited only by “unmarried kinswomen”.

Until 1991, there was only one man who got to own the house, and that was when a woman named Stella Reichel made legal changes to the will, which allowed her brother, Reverend Oswald Reichel, to co-own the house. After that instance, the house went back once again to female hands.

Learn more about the A la Ronde over at Amusing Planet.

(Image Credit: xlibber/ Wikimedia Commons)

We know that exercise does wonders of the body, but did you know that it can also help you fight cancer? Yes, you’ve read it right. Not only does exercise help you to be fit and strong; it also helps you in fighting the dreaded disease. This study sheds more light on the matter.

This new study focused on a particular immune cell called a cytotoxic T cell. Also known as killer T cells, these are the body’s cancer-killing agents. The hypothesis underpinning the research was that exercise produces certain metabolites that enhance the function of these cancer-killing cells.

Through a series of animal tests the new study reveals these killer T cells are indeed positively influenced by exercise. One experiment even transferred T cells from exercising mice to untrained mice and saw improved tumor reduction responses.

Another reason for us to stay physically active, I guess.

Learn more details about this study over at New Atlas.

(Image Credit: intographics/ Pixabay)

1983. American physiologist Benjamin Libet invited some people to participate in his experiment. It was an experiment that would spark interest in psychologists, philosophers, and even neuroscientists.

The study itself was simple. Participants were connected to an apparatus that measured their brain and muscle activity, and were asked to do two basic things. First, they had to flex their wrist whenever they felt like doing so.

Second, they had to note the time when they first became aware of their intention to flex their wrist. They did this by remembering the position of a revolving dot on a clock face. The brain activity Libet was interested in was the “readiness potential”, which is known to ramp up before movements are executed.

It wasn’t the experiment that was controversial. Rather, it was the findings. Through his experiment, Libet found out that the “participants’ brains had already “decided” to move, half a second before they felt consciously aware of it.” This seems to support the argument that there is no self that is distinct from the brain. In other words, there might be no such thing such as “free will”.

But is that really the case?

Know more about this controversial study over at The Conversation.

What are your thoughts about this one?

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Using his left hand as accompaniment, and the AK-47 that he’s holding with his right hand, Vinheteiro plays the Soviet Anthem, because why not? And since he’s holding a gun, and with his finger on the trigger, I’m pretty sure that no one will be stopping him from doing so.

The music still sounds good, though.

Well, what do you think?

(Image Credit: Vinheteiro/ YouTube)

It’s not a surprise that there are now more people who regularly use video conferencing apps to meet virtually with their friends and co-workers. But how much was the increase, really? Well, it is big enough to make people who invest in companies, which provide video conferencing services, happy.

Microsoft saw some big growth in Microsoft Teams at the beginning of the pandemic, and it has kept accelerating over the past six months. During an earnings call with investors today, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella reveled Microsoft Teams now has 115 million daily active users. That’s a more than 50 percent rise from the 75 million that Microsoft reported almost six months ago.

It’s difficult to compare Microsoft’s numbers to its rivals, though. Both Zoom and Google report daily active participants, which means a single user could be counted multiple times through different meetings during a day. Google revealed it has 100 million daily active participants earlier this year, and Zoom said it had 300 million daily active participants. Slack also saw some growth earlier this year.

Now that’s big money.

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: Alexandra_Koch/ Pixabay)

In this sea of carved pumpkins, there is one that is slightly different from the others. Unlike its peers, this one doesn’t have a nose. Can you find where it is?

This puzzle was made by Hungarian artist Gergely Dudás, who is also known online as Dudolf.

If you found it, congratulations. And for those of you still craving more, we also have this other visual puzzle from Dudás featuring a lone ghost hiding within an army of skeletons.

Via Mental Floss

(Image Credit: Dudolf/ Mental Floss)

For a person who is not used to lying, the said activity could be very stressful for him. When he lies, his respiratory and heart rate will increase. But why is this the case?

Lying generally involves more effort than telling the truth, and because of this, it involves the prefrontal cortex. A 2001 study by late neuroscientist Sean Spence (University of Sheffield in England) explored fMRI images of the brain while lying.

This is what the polygraph, more commonly known as the “lie detector”, is used for — to provide continuous readings of a person’s blood pressure and respiration rate, elements in one’s body which could indicate if that person is lying or not.

But can someone outsmart the polygraph? The answer is yes.

… for example, psychopaths, who lack empathy… do not exhibit the typical physiological stress responses when telling a lie.

This doesn’t mean, however, that we should deem the polygraph as something unreliable.

According to the American Polygraph Association (made up largely of polygraph examiners), the estimated accuracy of a polygraph can be up to 87 percent. That means that in 87 out of 100 cases, the polygraph will be able to detect if someone is telling the truth.

Learn more about the polygraph, as well as what happens to a person when he lies, over at Big Think.

(Image Credit: Federal Bureau of Investigation/ Wikimedia Commons)

Bad habits can be hard to break. Just like good habits, you do them unconsciously, and that’s the reason why it would be difficult to break and change them. But it doesn’t mean that it would be impossible. But of course, you have to do it the right way.

Diane Dreher provides us five tips based on neuroscience research that will help us break bad habits successfully. Here is the first one:

Build Awareness and Take Control. Habits are unconscious. The first step in breaking a bad habit is bringing it into conscious awareness. We can do this by consciously keeping score. My friend Bob had smoked cigarettes for 20 years. When he wanted to break this habit, he took out an index card, wrote down the date, and made a checkmark for each cigarette he smoked that day. Just by becoming aware, he decreased the number of cigarettes he smoked per day. In one month, he went down from two packs a day to one. Then he took charge, cutting down from smoking 20 cigarettes a day one week, to 19 a day the next, progressively smoking less and less until he finally quit completely.

Check out the other tips over at Psychology Today.

What bad habits were you able to break in the past?

(Image Credit: Pixabay)

Do you know what’s rarer than finding out that your friend wore a shirt similar to yours? It’s finding out that the rug you have has the same pattern as the one on the napkin that you’re holding. I’d say it’s a one in a million chance. Or is it much slimmer than that? What do you think?

(Image Credit: u/madewitheggs/ Reddit)

Chicago — About a week ago, Antoine Tissier was flying his drone on Lincoln Park, trying to capture the sunset. But this day was about to give him something even more beautiful than what he had in mind. As he flew his drone across the park,...

he spotted a couple having a photoshoot under the Ulysses S. Grant monument in Lincoln Park. Antoine quickly captured the view, landed his drone, and tried to catch up with the couple. Unfortunately, by the time he reached the monument, the people were already gone.

The photographer decided to post the spectacular shot on Instagram in hopes of tracking down the mysterious couple. “Unexpected picture of a mysterious #couple we are trying to identify!” Antoine wrote in the description of the picture. Thanks to the power of social media, it only took a few days for the photographer to find the couple he captured.

So how did Tissier manage to find the couple?

The answers over at Bored Panda.

(Image Credit: tissier.antoine/ Bored Panda)

(Image Credit: cranesweddings/ Bored Panda)

It’s an entirely different experience to play a horror game than to watch a horror movie, and I believe that the former is a more terrifying experience than the latter. In a horror movie, you just watch the story unfold. In a horror game, the experience is more immersive — you get to participate in the story as the character. The result is something more intense than what horror movies can offer.

Over the years, various developers have released their respective horror games on the market, and many of them have become hits. 

Kotaku has interviewed a few gamers and asked them the question: “what’s a game that really scared you?” For some, it was Resident Evil. For others, it was Silent Hill. 

More about this over at the site.

How about you? What game scared you the most?

(Image Credit: QuinceCreative/ Pixabay)

Many toy companies have sold us Baby Yoda toys, but it seems that the public’s thirst for the merchandise isn’t quenched yet. And now comes along another Baby Yoda toy. This time, it’s remote-controlled. That’s right, you can now have The Child walking around your house, and at a reasonable price, too!

Available this fall for $70, the Star Wars: The Mandalorian the Child “Real Moves Plush” stands 11 inches tall, so it’s slightly smaller than the animatronic figure used in the series. Mattel still managed to stuff it full of electronics, including authentic sound effects and motors to bring it to life.

The Child’s head can turn from side to side, and look up and down while it’s giant ears wiggle, and all the mechanisms are hidden under a flexible outer skin, which makes sense when you say it, but out of context feels like a horrifying thing to say about a baby. His tiny, snuggly robes can also be further adorned with an included Mythosaur skull pendant, like the one gifted to him by Din Djarin at the end of the first season.

Would you buy one?

(Image Credit: Mattel/ Gizmodo)

This is the quokka, a marsupial native to Western Australia. Like the other marsupials native to the country, such as the kangaroo and the wallaby, quokkas are herbivores and are mainly nocturnal. But one thing that sets the quokka apart from the aforementioned animals is its smile, which John Wells describes as “perpetual”.

Cute!

Image via John Wells on Facebook